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Bringing the crack since December 2003

Alani Ryan aka Loa Megapost

So, I'd been thinking about making a post about Loa anyways, but decided to do it for sure when some people in the request thread said they'd like to see more about her. Loa was one of those characters that showed up in the New X-Men: Academy X book as basically one of many background characters. She has slowly been making her way into more books, which is great since she's a pretty cool character. Anyways, for a little background, Alani is from Maui and her power is that she can dissolve matter. Think of her as Kitty Pryde, if Kitty destroyed everything she phased through. I think New X-Men 38 was the first time we saw her use her powers.

As you probably guessed, Loa isn't seen using her powers much in normal fights since she'd basically kill or mutilate anyone she was fighting.

Next up we have New X-Men 42 and her chilling with Wolfcub. Notice that she is eating ice cream. This will come up again later.

During this time period in New X-Men, Josh aka Elixir was having issues with his powers. He has a healing touch, but he had also recently discovered that he had a death touch that he'd killed Stryker with and was basically being all dark and broody about it and just sitting in his room all day creeping people out when they tried to talk to him. Until this happened in New X-Men 43

Yeah, that's right. Loa knows how to make the sadness go away. There hasn't been too much showing their relationship, but a few times during X-Force Josh mentioned them being a couple, so I assume they are still together.

Moving on to one of my favorite moments. During the whole Necrosha thing, Deadpool was having his "I'm an X-Man" phase and they put this back-up story in the X-Force annual. It starts out with Deadpool in someone's room playing with Sue Storm and Johnny Storm dolls (seriously), when he suddenly hears a scream.

A few Acolytes have been brought back to life and are looking for Magneto.

Deadpool actually calls Cyclops to confirm that Mags is on the team while Cykes yells at him and tells him to help out, but not to kill any of the people that have been brought back. Deadpool of course proceeds to "accidentally" stab one of the guys in the face.

Wade is very happy that the guys regenerate and runs off to get all his guns and stuff so he can "subdue" them. After a bit of fighting, one of them is about to stab Deadpool when Loa jumps in.

Oh Wade, you're such a jerk.

Moving on, here in Manifest Destiny 3, we see Alani showing others how to use technology

And here we have her in X-Men Legacy 239 taking out a Sentinel all by herself

And here we have her ghost hunting in Nation X 1

(Okay, I basically showed these scans because I love Mags messing with the kids.)

How about some baseball from X-Men Legacy 242?

I have no idea how Anole set that ball on fire, but whatever, I guess.

Here we have her in X-Men Legacy 243 talking about things that are relevant to my interests:

In Nation X 4, there was a story that focused on how since Utopia gets shipments of food in, that they have to watch that people don't horde it or anything, so they set up people to watch the kitchens at night. This night, Warpath is on watch duty while Loa, Match, and Rockslide decide that they want some sweets.

Can't find a door, just make one instead.

Oh Santo, you are so dumb. Love the "disguise" as well. Anyways, Warpath obviously knows they are there and tells them they are trespassing.

Love the vein popping out on Warpath's head. Ha. Anyways, he proceeds to trap Match and then he cuts off Santo's head before he faces Loa.

Do not mess with Loa when she wants her ice cream. She will straight up kill you. I did think that this was one of those stories where everyone was a tad bit out of character, but it was funny, so who cares.

Lastly, Loa has been showing up in the Namor ongoing series. The first story arc dealt with the whole underwater vampires thing. During the arc, Loa came down to Atlantis with Emma because she is really into Atlantean stuff and she wanted to help out with the vampire situation. During the big battle between the normal Atlanteans and the vampire ones, she showed back up in Namor 4

The guy who showed up with her is an Atlantean Mage/Scientist called Logomancer. I have no idea if he's a new character or if he's been around before, but he's pretty cool and has a nice sarcastic tone going a lot of the time. Anywhoo, everyone is busy fighting when this happens:

By the end of the issue, everything is cool and Namor has beaten the big bad.

Aww. Namor hugs. I kind of love that Alani seems to be a Star Wars nerd.

Namor 5 starts with Loa trying to breathe underwater again and failing, until she realises it's the necklace that makes it happen (duh) and puts it back on. We then get a flashback to the 1940s that deals with Betty Dean, who was a girlfriend of Namor's and was also good friends with Loa's grandmother, Alice. We see Namor give the necklace that Alani later has to Betty. After quite a few years, Alice has a baby and is planning to move to Hawaii with her husband whose family lives there. The flashbacks show how a lot of times Namor just leaves for long periods of time and then shows up whenever he pleases and Betty is sick of waiting around for him all the time and basically tells him to shove off and don't bother coming back anymore. Alice also gives him a piece of her mind and lets him know what a jerk he is a lot of the time. Then we get this:

Yeah, I've seen Namor be a dick before, but that was just...yeah. At least he realizes it himself. Anyways, we fastforward to just a few years ago to see when Alani's powers first activated. Alani and her dad are out surfing in Maui when King Shark shows up and starts going on about how these are his waters now and he gets his sharks to go after Loa's dad.

That would be a great story to tell. "So this shark was trying to eat my dad and I totally vaporized it just by touching it". Awesome. So Namor shows up and yanks Alani and her dad out of the water and then beats the crap out of King Shark.

I think that is quite honestly one of the best descriptions of Namor I've ever read. The issue ends with Alani swimming underwater and saying how she feels like she belongs in the water.

Namor 6 has them studying Alani to figure out what the necklace thing is doing to her. Dr Nemesis states that her lungs are actually changing so that she can breathe water.

Well, that sucks.

The skeleton things grab Namor and drag him into the necklace. The rest of the issue shows how Namor has been sucked into a kind of personal Hell for him where it's all desert and no water anywhere and he's being attacked by dead former kings of Atlantis. Emma tries to get into Loa's subconscious and see if she knows where Namor went and they basically decide to keep her isolated till they can figure out what's going on. I'd love to tell you more, but the next issue isn't out yet, so I don't know what happens. Oh, but this is the last page:

Very nifty! But... why the codename "Loa"? I'm only aware of one definition for that word ("the spirits and gods worshipped/venerated/revered in Voudoun"), but I'm not seeing how that applies here. Is there some other definition of the word?

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